


Day at the Races

by forthemyoui



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 11:24:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13950558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthemyoui/pseuds/forthemyoui
Summary: Momo is named Sana's emergency substitute at the college carnival's kissing booth and Mina happens to have the right amount of leftover tickets to become Momo's twelve-minute benefactor.





	Day at the Races

Momo was facing potentially the worst challenge of her life. Usually that would be her friendship with Sana in general, but it was now specifically her friendship with Sana obligating her to take over the school carnival’s kissing booth while Sana ran to the bathroom. Technically it would just be for ten minutes and the carnival was sort of cooling down, but Momo could see a new queue forming and Sana was bound to fall on the wet grass at least twice before she made it to the toilet.

Momo was the less outgoing of the Sana-Momo duo, but it didn’t mean she was unpopular in school. Guys were less direct with her but still made their interest known in other ways, such as via Tinder when Sana had jokingly created an account on her behalf. Momo was beginning to panic. She had been dragged to the carnival by Sana, gotten sulky when she found that Sana would be occupied for most of the day at the kissing booth, and then proceeded to venture out alone to win some plush toys at the games and failed miserably at each try. The people were closing in and Momo was getting more and more nervous by the moment. She didn’t know how to operate the timer. She didn’t know what her rates were. She didn’t know where the ticket box was - okay, there it was beneath the counter, but that didn’t make things a lot better.

There was in particular a group of boys who were standing together deliberating what to do and who should go, each one taking out his tickets and offering them to each other because they independently didn’t really dare to approach the booth themselves. As one of them was finally pushed to make a move as all adolescent boys are and not given a choice as to what to do with themselves, Momo searched the humid field for any sign of Sana returning. Not a clumsy blonde in sight. Fortunately, however, Momo spotted a girl with about four huge plush toy prizes strapped to her body and a whole chain of unused tickets walking past. She looked perfectly bored and a little lonely.

“Uh, Mina!” Momo called, startling the first boy so that he faltered in his steps. “Could you come here for a moment?”

Momo didn’t know Mina well. They were in Japanese culture appreciation society together, but only because the university had forced all the Japanese kids to fill the ranks of the society and prevent it from collapsing altogether. Momo knew Mina had messed up the least when they had to go for a tea ceremony class and that Mina was positively deadly in kendo; her strikes were precise and forceful and they hurt even when she was using the amount of force apparently appropriate for training and play sparring.

Mina paced over to her easily, perhaps unable to see the worry on her face.

“Yes?” Mina asked when she reached the counter, ten steps ahead of the next nearest customer.

“Uh, well,” Momo began; she hadn’t thought this far ahead.

“I didn’t know you were running this booth,” Mina said politely, adjusting one of the plush toy prizes on her belt loop so it let her stand closer to the counter; Momo stared enviously and sadly for a moment but her anxiety won over the disappointments of the day quickly enough.

“Well, I’m not really,” Momo admitted, “because Sana’s supposed to be running it.”

By now there were two boys peering over Mina’s shoulder.

“So, she’s on break?” Mina asked calmly again.

Momo nervously played with her fingers, avoiding the gazes of the people beginning to line up behind Mina. They were just seconds away from slipping into the gaps in Mina and Momo’s conversation to ask if the booth was open for business. Momo’s fingers skittered across the counter, eager to grasp Mina’s wrist and keep her hostage for just a few more moments.

“Are you her substitute?” Mina finally asked.

Momo nodded. “Yeah. So, are you here alone?”

“Yeah,” Mina answered easily. “Every year I think the games will get harder, but they tend to disappoint each time.”

“Really?” Momo asked, not even listening as she scanned the field behind Mina. “What’s your favourite carnival food?”

Mina smiled an extremely small smile. If you didn’t look out for it you might not have noticed it forming. Momo certainly wasn’t looking out for it. She was looking out for a blonde disaster rolling this way and listening out for a few accompanying high-pitched screams. Mina reached out for Momo’s hand and made her jump.

“Are you trying to avoid running the booth?” Mina asked understandingly.

Momo clenched her teeth together and nodded.

Mina lifted her other hand onto the counter. Balled in her fist were lines of tickets, at least thirty of them. Momo gawked at them and thought about her empty wallet and her remaining few ticket pieces, becoming a little bit more jealous by the second. When Mina ripped a ticket off a row and reached over for the ticket box, Momo began to sweat. She hadn’t even looked at Mina that way before, had never looked at Mina’s  _ mouth _ before, hadn’t ever wondered how Mina might look when she kissed someone, anyone. Was Mina even the type of person to kiss anyone in college?

Momo was frozen, clutching the ticket box to her chest.

“Do you want to start the timer?” Mina asked with a kind expression on her face.

“What?”

“The timer.”

Momo looked down at the baking timer the booth organisers had set on the table for use as a timer for each one-minute kiss. Momo turned to the chalkboard to remind herself of the rate and then shakily set the ticket box down so she could twist the pink egg-like timer to the one-minute mark. And then she closed her eyes and pursed her lips.

“What are you doing?” Mina asked two seconds later.

Momo blinked her eyes open. “Uh, I’m closing my eyes.”

“We’re not going to kiss,” Mina explained slowly, as if it was something Momo should have gotten from the start. “I just have a lot of tickets, is all. I can buy up Sana’s break if you need.”

“Oh,” Momo said, looking eternally grateful. “You don’t have to.”

“It’s okay,” Mina said, ripping off another ticket in preparation for the timer’s ring, “I have a lot of leftover ones.”

Momo licked her lips, suddenly admiring the sheen of sweat on Mina’s forehead and how the black strands of hair around her face stuck themselves to her cheeks when they fell. She swallowed and looked back down, remembering that just a couple of seconds ago, she was preparing herself to kiss this girl.

“You could play a lot of games with those,” Momo said, because in her head she was calculating how many more tries at the carnival games she could buy herself with the bunch of tickets in Mina’s hand. “Or you could get some carnival food.”

“I’m not really into carnival food,” Mina said simply, and then gestured to the large array of plush toys she had strapped to her body; it looked like an arsenal of weapons, but an adorable arsenal of weapons; Momo felt both enchanted and intimidated by Mina’s seeming prowess at the games.

“You don’t like the fried Oreos?” Momo asked.

Mina laughed an amused laugh. “I think I shouldn’t eat those.”

“Who thinks about what you shouldn’t eat at a carnival?” Momo asked with wide eyes.

Behind them, a bunch of people in the queue were sighing and looking at the time on their phones. As the timer rang, Momo began to panic and Mina easily slipped another ticket into the ticket box, securing for them another minute of conversation.

“You’re right,” Mina said, biting her lower lip and pushing her hair back in the heat, “my mum keeps telling me to live a little and try new things.”

“I think the ice cream doughnuts are really good,” Momo said.

“They’re like two tickets. That’s six thousand won,” Mina said disapprovingly.

“For  _ ice cream doughnuts _ ,” Momo emphasised, reaching over to clutch Mina’s sweaty hands. “We should get some later. My treat. As thanks for this.”

“Do you have any tickets left?” Mina asked.

“Uh, I think so,” Momo said uneasily.

“Okay, then your treat,” Mina said as she tore off another ticket and slipped it into the box in advance.

Ten minutes into conversation about the carnival and then about the sort of things Sana did, someone tapped Mina on the shoulder and asked her what she was doing at the booth. Mina simply replied that she was paying for time and slotted four whole tickets into the ticket box in front of her at one go. Momo watched three people leave the queue and chewed on the side of her cheek.

Twelve minutes into conversation, Sana reappeared, having freshened up for the next shift.

“Oh, yes, go ahead,” Sana said encouragingly, looking intently at both Mina and Momo, as she opened the swinging door to the booth and shimmied her way in. “Don’t let me interrupt you two.”

The timer rang for the twelfth time and Momo caught it before it buzzed itself off the counter.

“Looks like my time is up,” Mina said. “Thanks.”

Sana watched Mina go and pouted a little, whispering to Momo that Mina wouldn’t have been a bad kiss and she’d always been curious as to what sort of kisser Mina was anyway. Momo reacted to this with incredulity but also bit the tip of her tongue before something else could leave her mouth. Sana tapped the clipboard sheet with the ballpoint pen on string and Momo signed herself out.

“You made quite a bit,” Sana said. “People must have been excited by the change of staff. Did you kiss like ten people while I was gone?”

Momo coughed. “Loyal customer.”

Sana nodded slowly. “We actually have a rule about that. No consecutive kisses.”

“Oh,” Momo blinked. “I didn’t know.”

“It’s fine,” Sana said, “you weren’t briefed on the protocol, and money made is money made, and you made quite a bit.”

Momo didn’t want to say more, so she rummaged through her pockets for the last few tickets that she had and slipped out of the kissing booth to the dismay of a couple of people, some that she thought she recognised and some she definitely didn’t. She looked all across the game stalls, from the darts game to the basketball hoops one, and couldn’t spot Mina. She walked across a stretch of ten stalls and then walked back, turned a corner, and then strode quickly until she was sure she had covered the games area twice.

And then she remembered, and headed towards the food stalls. Mina was standing in front of the doughnuts cart with her plush toy prizes seeming to weigh her down. Momo came to stand next to each other and they studied the menu for a while until Mina came to a decision and Momo overwrote it with a good recommendation anyway.

“It’s good, right?” Momo asked.

“You have ice cream all over your face,” Mina giggled.

“Oh, really?” Momo asked sheepishly. “Well, it’s fine. No one’s looking.”

“Thanks for the treat,” Mina said. “It seems like you wanted to play more games but you honoured your promise anyway.”

Momo nodded, taking another bite out of her doughnut and maneuvering it such that the ice cream fell into her mouth instead of onto her lap. “I felt like you weren’t going to try some carnival food unless someone made you do it. Also, how did you win so many games?”

Mina shrugged. “Some of the games are skill-based. I’ve played those enough to have a fair chance. I don’t really play the ones based purely on chance with no skill involved. Those are just scams.”

“But they’re kind of fun,” Momo said. “I want to win the ring toss.”

“Impossible.”

“Have a bit of fun, will you?”

Mina rolled her eyes. “All right, we can try. Thanks again for the treat.”

They played the ring toss five times until Mina convinced Momo to give up. And then Mina played the basketball hoop throw, won a small prize, and got told to buzz off by the seniors running the game. A few stalls had decided to put up win limits for the day. Probably the best of all was that Mina guided Momo’s aim from behind her at the water gun target stall and they won a tiny unicorn. Momo transferred two of Mina’s large prizes to her body instead.

“We’re all out,” Mina said, even sweatier than she was before.

“Damn, we didn’t get to try the colourful cotton candy,” Momo lamented.

“It’s sugar,” Mina told her.

“With edible glitter,” Momo added.

Momo spotted Sana wrapping up the kissing booth at about six in the evening, and got nervous to be holding Mina’s hand (both of theirs sweaty as hell) and exiting the carnival. Mina was willing to let go of Momo’s hand, but Momo looked at Sana until they met eyes and Sana waved her along, pretending to be busy. Apparently she’d found someone she was waiting to give free kisses to after the booth’s closure.

“Most expensive date ever, by the way.” Mina said softly but smoothly, laughing at her own joke. “Nobody’s time has ever been that pricey. Usually a dinner wouldn’t even come up to this.”

“Sorry,” Momo mumbled, smiling and pouting at the same time.

“It’s okay,” Mina said, taking a breath. “Worth it.”

Momo finally plucked up the courage to steer Mina underneath the bleachers, adjusting the tentage so while some light came in, they were more or less out of people’s sight.

“I think I owe you this,” Momo said, dropping a toy and slipping her hand around the side of Mina’s waist so that they could lean in and kiss.

Momo didn’t know if it was a minute; it would have been useful to have a timer. She just kissed Mina long and slow, stroking the small of Mina’s back. They were both breathing hotly onto each other’s faces, but it was just how school carnivals were, and this was already a better one considering what they were doing. Mina was a good kisser, eager, and with a good hold on Momo’s elbow. Momo wanted to kiss Mina all day long, she suddenly thought, and wondered how expensive that might be.

“Was that a minute?” Momo asked as they came up for air.

“I think I bought way more than a minute,” Mina giggled, making Momo turn red.

“Some other time then.”

“Sounds good,” Mina replied softly. “I take instalments with interest, though.”

“Works for me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Wow fluff after two consecutive shots of slightly heavy stuff. I take prompts sometimes; leave them in comments


End file.
